[NTLUG:Discuss] /etc/hosts.allow and deny

[Kelledin]

On Thursday 21 February 2002 06:41 pm, you wrote:
>  It has nothing to do with hosts.deny/hosts.allow.  Those two files only
> affect outside programs contacting your machine for the services listed in
> /etc/inetd.conf (or in xinetd.d for newer machines).
>
>   Try looking through /var/log/messages, and /var/log/maillog.
>
>   It may be fetchmail delivers the mail into the sendmail queue, and you
> have to run sendmail to finish the delivery....?
>
> On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Geremy L. Hamlett wrote:
> > I am trying to config my /etc/hosts.deny and /etc/hosts.allow files to
> > allow fetchmail to pick up my mail from an SMTP server and deliver it to
> > my machine.  With Out anything in my hosts.allow file fetchmail picks up
> > my mail, but when I go to check it, its not there(deleted).  I have tried
> > to putt the smtp server in the hosts.allow file but I get the same thing.
> >
> > Thanks for your time,
> > --
> > Geremy L. Hamlett
> > http://omega.uta.edu/~glh6688
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>
> _______________________________________________
> http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

fetchmail and sendmail disregard /etc/hosts.*.  inetd/xinetd services obey 
those files; so do certain applications built against libwrap.  An 
alternative MTA like postfix might obey /etc/hosts.{allow,deny}, but I've 
never tried one.

For fetchmail to do its job, you have to have some sort of SMTP/UUCP server 
(like sendmail or postfix) configured and running in daemon mode on the local 
machine.  If that SMTP/UUCP server is using procmail, you need to inspect 
~/.procmailrc to figure out where your mail is going ("man procmailrc" for 
more info on that).  procmail could quite possibly be sticking your mail in 
some place where the standard mail command doesn't look by default.

You can get a log of fetchmail by running it in this fashion:

fetchmail -v -v -L <logfile>

In this manner, it will still run as a daemon.  You can inspect the comments 
of this file for more information on what's going wrong.

_______________________________________________
Kelledin
"If a server crashes in a server farm and no one hears it, does it still cost 
four figures to fix?"